The stock market’s recent gains have at least three plausible explanations: corporate earnings growth, the prospect of tax reform, and deregulation. Tax reform and deregulation are stated priorities of the Trump Administration and have the potential to lift the economy and generate additional earnings. Investors obviously like that prospect, though regulation itself is a tool used subversively by crony capitalists to stifle competition in their markets. Conceivably, some of the large firms that dominate major stock indices could suffer from deregulation. And I have to wonder whether the economic threat of Trumpian trade protectionism is not taken seriously by the equity markets. Let’s hope they’re right.

It’s no mystery that high taxes and tax complexity can inhibit economic growth. Let’s face it: when it comes to productive effort, we can all think of better things to do than tax planning, crony capitalist or not. The same is true of regulation: the massive diversion of resources into non-productive compliance activities stifles innovation, growth, and even the stability of the status quo. Regulation creates obstacles to activities like new construction and the diffusion of telecommunications services. And it discourages the creation of new products and services like potentially life-saving drugs and slows their introduction to market. The sheer number of federal regulations is so spectacular that one wonders how anything productive ever gets done! Patrick McLaughlin of The Mercatus Center and several coauthors tell of “The Impossibility of Comprehending, or Even Reading, All Federal Regulations“.

Regulation is more than a mere economic burden. It is the product of an administrative apparatus that is not subject to the checks and balances that are at the very heart of our system of constitutional government. That is a threat to basic liberties. Barry Brownstein offers an instructive case study of “The Tyranny of Administrative Power” involving violations of property rights in New Hampshire. The case involves the administrative machinations surrounding an installation of high-power lines.

Governmental efforts to spur innovation ordinarily take the form of spending on research, subsidies for certain technologies or favored industries (e.g., alternative energy), and large government programs dedicated to the achievement of various technological goals (e.g., NASA, DARPA). Together with regulatory rules that influence the allocation of resources, these governmental efforts are called industrial policy. An unfortunate recent example is Trump’s decision to retain the renewable fuel standard (RFS), but on the whole, industrial policy does not seem central to Trump’s effort to stimulate innovation.

It’s clear that a deregulatory effort is well underway: the so-called “deconstruction of the administrative state” hailed by Steve Bannon not long after Trump took office. First came Trump’s 2-for 1 executive order (also see here) requiring the elimination (or modification) of two rules for every new rule. In the Wall Street Journal, Greg Ip writes about changes at the FDA and the FCC that could dramatically alter the pace of innovation in the pharmaceutical and telecom industries. (If the link is gated, you access the article on the WSJ’s Facebook page.) Speedier and less burdensome reviews of new drugs will greatly benefit consumers. An end to net neutrality rules will support greater investment in broadband infrastructure and access to innovative services. There is a new emphasis at the FCC on enabling innovative solutions to communications problems, such as Google’s effort to provide cell phone service in Puerto Rico by flying balloons over the island. The Trump Administration is also reining-in an aggressive EPA, the source of many questionable rules that weaken property rights and inhibit growth. (Again, the RFS is a disappointing exception.) Health care reform could offer much needed relief from overzealous insurance regulation and high compliance costs for physicians and other providers.

But deconstructing the administrative state is hard. Regulations just seem to metastasize, so deregulatory gains are offset by continued rule-making. This is partly from new legislation, but it is also a consequence of the incentives facing self-interested regulators. With that in mind, it’s impressive that regulation has not grown, on balance, thus far into Trump’s first year in office. According to Patrick McLaughlin, zero regulatory growth has been unusual going back at least to the Carter Administration. In quoting McLaughlin, The Weekly Standard says that Trump might well earn the mantle of “King of Deregulation“, but he has a long way to go. Brookings has this interactive tool to keep track of his deregulatory progress. One item on the Brookings list is the President’s intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. That represents a big save in terms of avoiding future regulatory burdens.

I can’t help but be wary of other avenues through which the Trump Administration might regulate activity and undermine economic growth. Chief among these is Trump’s negative attitude toward foreign trade. Government interference with our freedom to freely engage in transactions with the rest of the world is costly in terms of both foreign and domestic prices. With something of a history as a crony capitalist himself, Trump is not immune to pressure from private economic interests, as illustrated by his recent cow-tow to the ethanol lobby. Nevertheless, I’m mostly encouraged by the administration’s deregulatory efforts, and I hope they continue. The equity market apparently expects that to be the case.

The two-for-one regulatory order issued by the Trump White House in January raises some practical difficulties in implementation. It requires that federal agencies eliminate two regulatory rules for every new rule promulgated, both in terms of the number of rules and any incremental regulatory costs imposed. Two out for every one in. Questions surrounding the meaning of “a regulation”, how to define incremental costs, and whether a particular rule is actually mandated by legislation are not trivial. Nevertheless, the spirit of this order is admirable and it serves as the leading edge of the Administration’s attempt to roll back the scope and impact of excessive government authority.

The cost of regulation is vast. Economists at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University have estimated the total cumulative cost of regulation in the U.S., finding that regulation has reduced economic growth by 0.8 percent per year since 1980. Without the additional regulatory growth since 1980, the U.S. economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it was in 2012. That’s a $4 trillion shortfall, or roughly $13,000 per person.

While regulation and administrative control over the private economy takes an increasing toll on economic growth and human welfare, the problem goes beyond economic considerations: administrative agencies have “progressively” usurped not just legislative but also judicial power. The concentration of executive, legislative and judicial power constitutes a “fourth branch of government“, a development inimical to the principles enshrined in our Constitution and a prescription for slow-boil tyranny. It facilitates rent seeking and corporatism just as surely as it creates a ruling class of individuals who act on their personal and arbitrary inclinations. We are ruled by men backed by police power, not impartial laws.

“Government agencies regulate Americans in the full range of their lives, including their political participation, their economic endeavors, and their personal conduct. Administrative power has thus become pervasively intrusive. But is this power constitutional?

A similar sort of power was once used by English kings, and this book shows that the similarity is not a coincidence. In fact, administrative power revives absolutism. On this foundation, the book explains how administrative power denies Americans their basic constitutional freedoms, such as jury rights and due process. No other feature of American government violates as many constitutional provisions or is more profoundly threatening. As a result, administrative power is the key civil liberties issue of our era.“

“Hamburger examines the assertion that rule-making must be delegated by Congress to administrative agencies because legislation cannot reasonably be expected to address the many details and complexities encountered in the implementation of new laws. Yet this is a delegation of legislative power. Once delegated, this power has a way of metastasizing at the whim of agency apparatchiks, if not at the direction of the chief executive. If you should want to protest an administrative ruling, your first stop will not be a normal court of law, but an administrative review board or a court run by the agency itself! You’ll be well advised to hire an administrative attorney to represent you. Eventually, and at greater expense, an adverse decision can be appealed to the judicial branch proper.“

The exercise of rule-making authority, and even extra-legal legislative action by the administrative state, has economic costs that are bad enough. Hamburger also emphasizes the breakdown of the separation of executive and judicial powers inherent in the enforcement and adjudication of disputes under administrative law. This was the subject of the second Sacred Cow Chips post referenced above: “Courts and Their Administrative Masters“. It reviewed an unfortunate standard established by court precedent involving judicial (“Chevron”) deference to administrative agency fact-finding and even interpretation of law. While the decisions of administrative courts, which are run by the agencies themselves, can be appealed to the judicial branch, such appeals often amount to exercises in futility.

“…courts apply a test of judgement as to whether the administrative agency’s interpretation of the law is “reasonable”, even if other “reasonable” interpretations are possible. This gets particularly thorny when the original legislation is ambiguous with respect to a certain point.

…the courts should not abdicate their role in reviewing an agency’s developmental evidence for any action, and the reasonability of an agency’s applications of evidence relative to alternative courses of action. Nor should the courts abdicate their role in ruling on the law itself.“

This paper on Judicial Deference to Agencies by Evan D. Bernick of Georgetown Law makes the case that judicial deference is a violation of the constitutional separation of powers, concluding that:

“… in cases involving administrative deprivations of core private rights to ‘life, liberty, or property,’ fact deference violates Article III’s vesting of ‘[t]he judicial power’ in the federal courts; constitutes an abdication of the duty of independent judgment that Article III imposes upon federal judges; and violates the Fifth Amendment by denying litigants ‘due process of law,’ which requires (1) judicial proceedings in an Article III court prior to any individualized deprivation of ‘life, liberty, or property’; and (2) fact-finding by independent, impartial fact-finders.“

“Though the abolishment of the spoils system [which allowed civil service hiring and firing based on political party] was meant to mitigate corruption and incompetence, it has resulted in a toxic combination of enhanced agency power and an entrenched civil servant class with its own institutional—and frequently political—interests, virtually unaccountable to the president or any other elected official.“

The Stepmans discuss legislation that might stem the usurpation of lawmaking power by the administrative state. They are convinced that the administrative state must be reigned-in. Ironically, expanded executive authority means that the process of reversal is not that difficult in many cases. By way of example, here’s a piece on the ease of undoing certain Obama era regulations. Executive orders, or “the pen and the phone” in Obama’s charming parlance, lack legitimate legislative authority and can be reversed by new executive orders. I firmly believe that reversing the earlier orders is the right thing to do at the moment, but the unchecked authority that makes it possible (and the supremacy of the administrative state) is a source of economic instability, and it must end. Eric Boehm makes this point eloquently in Reason at the last link above:

“New policies that affect wide swaths of the economy and reshape entire business models should go through Congress, or at the very least should be subject to the public rulemaking process. Guidance documents and other ‘dark matter’ regulations that by-pass those processes can be un-made as quickly as they were made, leaving businesses to deal with an ever-changing and unpredictable regulatory state that does not really help anyone, no matter which side you’re on in any individual policy fight.“

Why does regulation of private industry so often inure to the benefit of the regulated at the expense of consumers? In the popular mind, at least, regulating powerful market players restrains “excessive” profits or ensures that their practices meet certain standards. More often than not, however, regulation empowers the strongest market players at the expense of the very competition that would otherwise restrain prices and provide innovative alternatives. The more complex the regulation, the more likely that will be the result. Smaller firms seldom have the wherewithal to deal with complicated regulatory compliance. Moreover, regulatory standards are promulgated by politicians, bureaucrats, and often the most powerful market players themselves. If ever a system was “rigged”, to quote a couple of well-known presidential candidates, it is the regulatory apparatus. Pro-regulation candidates might well have the voters’ best interests at heart, or maybe not, but the losers are usually consumers and the winners are usually the dominant firms in any regulated industry.

The extent to which our wanderings into the regulatory maze have rewarded crony capitalists — rent seekers — is bemoaned by Daniel Mitchell in “A Very Depressing Chart on Creeping Cronyism in the American Economy“. The chart shows that about 40% of the increase in U.S. corporate profits since 1970 was generated by rent-seeking efforts — not by activities that enhance productivity and output. The chart is taken from an article in the Harvard Business Review by James Bessen of Boston University called “Lobbyists Are Behind the Rise in Corporate Profits“. Here are a couple of choice quotes from the article:

“Lobbying and political campaign spending can result in favorable regulatory changes, and several studies find the returns to these investments can be quite large. For example, one study finds that for each dollar spent lobbying for a tax break, firms received returns in excess of $220. …regulations that impose costs might raise profits indirectly, since costs to incumbents are also entry barriers for prospective entrants. For example, one study found that pollution regulations served to reduce entry of new firms into some manufacturing industries.”

“This research supports the view that political rent seeking is responsible for a significant portion of the rise in profits [since 1970]. Firms influence the legislative and regulatory process and they engage in a wide range of activity to profit from regulatory changes, with significant success. …while political rent seeking is nothing new, the outsize effect of political rent seeking on profits and firm values is a recent development, largely occurring since 2000. Over the last 15 years, political campaign spending by firm PACs has increased more than thirtyfold and the Regdata index of regulation has increased by nearly 50% for public firms.“

A good explanation of Bessen’s findings is provided by Guy Rolnik, including an interview with Bessen. Law Professor Glenn Reynolds of the University of Tennessee put his finger on the same issue in an earlier article entitled “Why we still don’t have flying cars“. One can bicker about the relative merits of various regulations, but as Reynolds points out, the expansion of the administrative and regulatory state has led to a massive diversion of resources that is very much a detriment to the intended beneficiaries of regulation:

“… 1970 marks what scholars of administrative law (like me) call the ‘regulatory explosion.’ Although government expanded a lot during the New Deal under FDR, it wasn’t until 1970, under Richard Nixon, that we saw an explosion of new-type regulations that directly burdened people and progress: The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, the founding of Occupation Safety and Health Administration, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, etc. — all things that would have made the most hard-boiled New Dealer blanch.

Within a decade or so, Washington was transformed from a sleepy backwater (mocked by John F. Kennedy for its ‘Southern efficiency and Northern charm’) to a city full of fancy restaurants and expensive houses, a trend that has only continued in the decades since. The explosion of regulations led to an explosion of people to lobby the regulators, and lobbyists need nice restaurants and fancy houses.“

Matt Ridley hits on a related point in “Industrial Strategy Can Be Regressive“, meaning that government planning and industrial regulation have perverse effects on prices and economic growth that hit the poor the hardest. Ridley, who is British, discusses regressivity in the context of his country’s policy environment, but the lessons are general:

“The history of industrial strategies is littered with attempts to pick winners that ended up picking losers. Worse, it is government intervention, not laissez faire, that has done most to increase inequality and to entrench wealth and privilege. For example, the planning system restricts the supply of land for housebuilding, raising property prices to the enormous benefit of the haves (yes, that includes me) at the expense of the have-nots. …

Why are salaries so high in financial services? Because there are huge barriers to entry erected by government, which hands incumbent firms enormous quasi-monopoly advantages and thereby shelters them from upstart competition. Why are cancer treatments so expensive? Because governments give monopolies called patents to the big firms that invent them. Why are lawyers so rich? Because there is a government-licensed cartel restricting the supply of them.“

Ridley’s spirited article gives emphasis to the fact that the government cannot plan the economy any more than it can plan the way our tastes and preferences will evolve and respond to price incentives; it cannot plan production any more than it can anticipate changes in resource availability; it cannot dictate technologies wisely any more than it can predict the innumerable innovations brought forth by private initiative and market needs; it almost never can regulate any better than the market can regulate itself! But government is quite capable of distorting prices, imposing artificial rules, picking suboptimal technologies, consuming resources, and rewarding cronies. One should never underestimate the potential for regulation, and government generally, to screw things up!

If you hope for government to solve economic problems, try to maintain some perspective: the state has unique abilities to botch it, and its power to distort and degrade the economy in the process of “helping” is vast. Government spending at all levels copped about 18% of the U.S. economy’s final output in 2014, but the public sector’s impact is far more pervasive than that suggests. Private fixed investment in new structures and equipment accounted for only about 16% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP); the nonresidential portion of fixed investment was less than 13% of GDP. I highlight these two components of GDP because no one doubts the importance of capital investment as a determinant of the economy’s productive capacity. But government is a larger share of spending, it can divert saving away from investment, and it creates a host of other impediments to productivity and efficient resource allocation.

The private economy is remarkable in its capacity to satisfy human wants. The market is a manifestation of spontaneous order, lacking the conscious design of any supreme authority. It is able to adjust to dynamic shifts in desires and resource constraints; it provides reliable feedback in the form of changing prices to modulate and guide the responses of participants through all stages of production. Most forms of government activity, however, are not guided by these signals. Instead, the state imposes binding and sometimes immediate constraints on the decisions of market participants. The interference takes a number of forms, including price controls, but they all have the power to damage the performance and outcomes of markets.

The productive base at each stage of the market process is a consequence of the interplay of perceived business opportunities and acts of saving or deferred consumption. The available flow of saving depends on its rewards, which are heavily influenced by taxes and government intervention in financial markets. It’s worth noting here that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world, as well as double taxation of corporate income paid out to owners. In addition, the tax system is used as a tool to manipulate the allocation of resources, drawing them into uses that are politically favored and punishing those in disfavor. The damaging impact is compounded by the fact that changes in taxes are often unknown ex ante. This adds a degree of political risk to any investment decision, thus discouraging capital spending and growth in the economy’s productive base.

The government is also a massive and growing regulator of economic activity. Over 100,000 new regulatory restrictions were added to the Code of Federal Regulations between 2008 and 2012. Regulation can have prohibitive compliance costs and may forbid certain efficiencies, often based on flimsy or nonexistent cost/benefit comparisons. It therefore damages the value and returns on embedded capital and discourages new investment. It is usually uneven in its effects across industries and it typically reduces the level of competition in markets because small firms are less capable of surviving the costs it imposes. Innovation is stifled and prices are higher as a result.

From a philosophical perspective, even the best cost/benefit comparisons are suspect as tools for evaluating government intervention. Don Boudreaux quotes Anthony de Jasay’s The State on this point:

“What could be more innocuous, more unexceptional than to refrain from intervening unless the cost-benefit comparison is favourable? Yet it treats the balancing of benefits and costs, good and bad consequences, as if the logical status of such balancing were a settled matter, as if it were technically perhaps demanding but philosophically straightforward. Costs and benefits, however, stretch into the future (problems of predictability) and benefits do not normally or exclusively accrue to the same persons who bear the costs (problems of externality). … Treating it as a pragmatic question of factual analysis, one of information and measurement, is tacitly taking the prior and much larger questions as having been somehow, somewhere resolved. Only they have not been.“

Poorly-executed and inappropriate stabilization policy is another way in which government distorts decisions at all stages of production. There are many reasons why these policies tend to be ineffective and potentially destructive, especially in the long run. Keynesian economics, based on ideas articulated by John Maynard Keynes, offers prescriptions for government action during times of instability. That means “expansionary” policy when the economy is weak and “contractionary” policy when it is strong. At least that is the intent. This framework relies on the notion that components of aggregate demand determine the economy’s output, prices and employment.

The major components of GDP in the National Income and Product Accounts are consumer spending, private investment, government spending, and net foreign spending. In a Keynesian world, these are treated as four distinct parts of aggregate “demand”, and each is governed by particular kinds of assumed behavior. Supply effects are treated with little rigor, if at all, and earlier stages of production are considered only to the extent that their value added is included, and that the finished value of investment (including new inventories) is one of the components of aggregate demand.

Final spending on goods and services (GDP) may be convenient because it corresponds to GDP, but that is simply an accounting identity. In fact, GDP represents less than 45% of all transactions. (See the end note below.) In other words, intermediate transactions for raw materials, business-to-business (B2B) exchange of services and goods in a partly fabricated state, and payments for distributional services are not counted, but they exceed GDP. They are also more variable than GDP over the course of the business cycle. Income is generated and value is added at each stage of production, not only in final transactions. To say that “value-added” is counted across all stages is a restatement of the accounting identity. It does not mean that those stages are treated behaviorally. Technology, capital, employees, and complex decision-making are required at each stage to meet demands in competitive markets. Aggregation at the final goods level glosses over all this detail.

The focus of the media and government policymakers in a weak economy is usually on “underconsumption”. The claim is often heard that consumer spending represents “over two-thirds of the economy”, but it is only about one-third of total transactions at all levels. It is therefore not as powerful an engine as many analysts assert. Government efforts to stimulate consumption are often thwarted by consumers themselves, who behave in ways that are difficult for models to capture accurately.

Government spending to combat weakness is another typical prescription, but such efforts are usually ill-timed and are difficult to reverse as the economy regains strength. The value of most government “output” is not tested in markets and it is not subject to competitive pressure, so as the government absorbs additional resources, the ability of the economy to grow is compromised. Programmatic ratcheting is always a risk when transfer payments are expanded. (Fixed programs that act as “automatic stabilizers”, and that are fiscally neutral over the business cycle, are less objectionable on these grounds, but only to the extent that they are not manipulated by politicians or subject to fraud.) Furthermore, any measure that adds to government deficits creates competition for the savings available for private capital investment. Thus, deficits can reduce the private economy’s productive capacity.

Government investment in infrastructure is a common refrain, but infrastructure spending should be tied to actual needs, not to the business cycle. Using public infrastructure spending for stabilization policy creates severe problems of timing. Few projects are ever “shovel-ready”, and rushing into them is a prescription for poor management, cost overruns and low quality.

Historically, economic instability has often been a consequence of poorly-timed monetary policy actions. Excessive money growth engineered by the Federal Reserve has stimulated excessive booms and inflation in the prices of goods and assets. These boom episodes were followed by market busts and recessions when the Fed attempted to course-correct by restraining money growth. Booms tend to foster misjudgments about risk that end in over-investment in certain assets. This is especially true when government encourages risk-taking via implicit “guarantees” (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and “too-big-to-fail” promises, or among individuals who can least afford it, such as low-income homebuyers.

Given a boom-and-bust cycle inflicted by monetary mismanagement, attempts to stimulate demand are usually the wrong prescription for a weak economy. Unemployed resources during recessions are a direct consequence of the earlier malinvestment. It is better to let asset prices and wages adjust to bring them into line with reality, while assisting those who must transition to new employment. The best prescription for instability is a neutral stance toward market risks combined with stable policy, not more badly-timed countercyclical efforts. The best prescription for economic growth is to shrink government’s absorption of resources, restoring their availability to those with incentives to use them optimally.

The more that central authorities attempt to guide the economy, the worse it gets. The torpid recovery from the last recession, despite great efforts at stimulus, demonstrates the futility of demand-side stabilization policy. The sluggishness of the current expansion also bears witness to the counterproductive nature of government activism. It’s a great credit to the private market that it is so resilient in the face of long-standing government economic and regulatory mismanagement. A bureaucracy employing a large cadre of technocrats is a “luxury” that only a productive, dynamic economy can afford. Or can it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Note On Output Measures

More complete aggregations of economic activity than GDP are gross output (GO) and gross domestic expenditures (GDE). These were developed in detail by economist Mark Skousen in his book “The Structure of Production“, published in 1990. GO includes all final transactions plus business-to-business (B2B) transactions, while GDE adds the costs of wholesale and retail distribution to GO. Or as Skousen says in this paper:

“GDE is defined as the value of all transactions (sales) in the production of new goods and services, both finished and unfinished, at all stages of production inside a country during a calendar year.“

GO and GDE show the dominance of business transactions in economic activity. GDE is more than twice as large as GDP, and B2B transactions plus business investment are twice the size of consumer spending. According to Skousen, GDE varies with the business cycle much more than GDP. Many economic indicators focus on statistics at earlier stages of production, yet real final spending is often assumed to be the only measure of transactions that matters.

Employers are attempting to minimize the cost of Obamacare. The law makes hiring more expensive and leads to substitution of part-time for full-time workers;

The “death spiral” might not be far-off for Obamacare. Here is Tanner’s assessment:

“The young and healthy simply haven’t signed up for Obamacare in the same numbers as those who are older and sicker. The only way for insurers to offset their skyrocketing [Medical Loss Ratios] is to hike premiums still further. … premiums in the worst states could have to rise by an average of 34 percent, and possibly as much as 52 percent. But premium hikes of that magnitude would almost certainly further discourage younger and healthier Americans from buying insurance.“

There is no question that Obamacare will have to be replaced or changed substantially. Unfortunately, Obamacare apologists simply can’t come to grips with the reality of the law’s failure. They would do well to start focusing on new solutions to the problems that Obamacare was intended to solve. To that end, the Mercatus Center commissioned a collection of seven essays on how best to deal with the problem of pre-existing conditions, now published on the Mercatus web site. Market-based solutions are needed to encourage competition among insurers, incentivize innovation and cost control, and reestablish the primacy of the patient-provider relationship.

My day-job at a financial institution has become increasingly dominated by governance and compliance issues, due largely to the Dodd-Frank Act. Much less of my time these days is dedicated to activities that are of direct value to the business or its customers. It’s not just me, but a large number of talented professionals with whom I work, many having advanced degrees. And a platoon of government regulators with advanced degrees often resides in a conference room on our floor. As I overheard one colleague say the other day, even a sneeze now requires permission from regulators. It feels very much like working for a regulated public utility, or worse yet, a government agency. This is obviously costly for shareholders, customers and taxpayers. If asked, I would be hard-pressed to explain how such massive compliance activity adds value for anyone, except perhaps the regulators themselves, or those who like the job guarantee provided by the situation. Does it offer some extra guarantee of stability for our institution, which remained stable and viable throughout the last financial crisis? Not likely, especially if actually managing the business has anything to do with it. Does it guarantee the stability of the larger financial system to impose massive compliance costs and ossify an otherwise dynamic enterprise?

The financial industry is not the only sector plagued by this phenomenon. At Coyote Blog, Warren Meyer provides a great perspective based on his own experience (and he deserves the inspirational hat-tip for this post). Meyer owns and operates a company that manages public parks. Here is his summary:

“Ten years ago, most of my company’s free capacity was used to pursue growth opportunities and refine operations. Over the last four years or so, all of our free capacity has been spent solely on compliance.“

Meyer offers details of compliance issues that have robbed his business of productive time and energy:

He goes on to note some economy-wide implications of these entanglements:

“… for folks who are scratching their head over recent plateauing of productivity gains and reduced small business origination numbers, you might look in this direction.

By the way, it strikes me that regulatory compliance issues set a minimum size for business viability. You have to be large enough to cover those compliance issues and still make money. What I see happening is that as new compliance issues are layered on, that minimum size rises, like a rising tide slowly drowning companies not large enough to keep their head above water.“

There is no doubt that heavy regulation favors large firms over small firms, and it makes competing with entrenched businesses more difficult for new entrants. Here is the first of a trio of relevant posts from the Mercatus Center, a summary of research finding that regulation reduces new business start-ups and hiring activity.

“From a regulatory agency’s perspective, recycling old rules makes sense: Old rules have withstood legal challenges and offer a relatively safe legal route. However, the rules are unlikely to optimally fit the new context for which they are employed. The use of rules that aren’t optimized for the task at hand can significantly hamper innovation and the development of technology. Even worse, due to poor design, they may not actually accomplish the new objective.“

A case in point is the recent imposition of “net neutrality” rules, which prevent ISPs and internet backbone providers from charging incremental rates to network hogs. This involves the application of regulatory rules designed for railroads 130 years ago and applied to the phone system 80 years ago. L. Gordon Crovitz writes of the early, negative impact of this regulation on investment in broadband in a piece entitled “Obamanet Is Hurting Broadband” (if the link fails, Google “wsj Crovitz Obamanet Broadband” and choose the first link returned):

“Today bureaucrats lobbied by special interests determine what is ‘fair’ and ‘reasonable’ on the Internet, including rates, tariffs and business arrangements. The FCC got thousands of requests for new regulations within weeks of the new rules. … Before Obamanet went into effect, economist Hal Singer of the Progressive Policy Institute predicted in The Wall Street Journal that if price and other regulations were introduced, capital investments by ISPs could quickly fall … 5% and 12% a year …. Now Mr. Singer has analyzed the latest data, and his prediction has come true.“

Crovitz correctly states that consumers want more broadband, and broadband growth requires investment. Systematically punishing those who make such investments will not bring improvements in service. And this is not an isolated result. Apart from the absorption of staff time (which is often required to manage new investment), regulation discourages productive capital investment in new facilities, equipment and technology. The potential growth of the economy suffers as a result, including the potential growth of wages.

Is there really a trend toward greater regulation? Yes, and it is not new. Has it accelerated? A third Mercatus Center post demonstrates that the Obama Administration, in terms of new regulatory restrictions, is on a pace to exceed all preceding presidents over the past 40 years. This is based on the Code of Federal Regulation (though Jimmy Carter edged Obama slightly over Obama’s first four years). Obama’s penchant for executive orders shows no sign of abating, and Congress is apparently incapable of over-riding any veto. Much of this can be reversed, in principle, but new regulations have a way of creating political constituencies, so reversals might be easier to say than do.

Are unpaid internships of any benefit to the student/intern? If not, then why do you suppose several hundred thousand smart students accept them each year? And there are many more internships for which the pay is nominal. Clearly these students have something to gain, though some would still argue that interns are exploited. They would like to be paid, of course, but they are sufficiently forward-thinking to recognize opportunities, even if they are unpaid gigs.

What’s really silly is the Department of Labor’s “tests” for whether an unpaid internship can be offered. In truth, it would be impossible to meet the DOL’s requirements, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Bryan Caplan is on very safe ground in arguing that “Every Unpaid Internship Is Illegal“. Apparently the rules are just for show, though again, some would like to see the practice ended. But here is the truth from Caplan:

“Internships are vocational education. If schools can educate students in exchange for their tuition, why can’t businesses educate students in exchange for their labor? No reason, just anti-market bigotry.“

Caplan’s description of the transaction is apt. From the firm’s point of view, bringing an intern into the office has disadvantages. With some introduction, the intern can perform various low-level tasks, but they absorb the time of paid staff because some degree of oversight is required. And there is some risk: an intern might prove capable of performing fairly complex tasks, but some don’t work out at all. The hope is that they can make a minor contribution to the work effort, add to the firm’s recruiting pipeline, and perhaps strengthen the firm’s ties to the student’s learning institution. In exchange, the intern gains valuable experience in an actual business environment and walks away with a stronger resume and some contacts. A mutually beneficial trade.

For the sake of intellectual consistency, proponents of the minimum wage should oppose unpaid or low-paying internships. The situations differ only in terms of the typical job description and its educational requirements. In both instances, opposition to the voluntary exchange of labor for training and experience would foreclose opportunities of which many are happy to avail themselves. The worst of it is that the minimum wage itself inflicts its damage on the least skilled, who need opportunities the most. This is harmful and foolish intervention, however well-intentioned.

The harm is vividly illustrated by responses to President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25, and to various moves on the part of state and local governments to raise the minimum wage within their jurisdictions. The end-game will be higher prices, more automation, lower employment and reduced hours among low-skilled workers (and those with less work experience). This article about Wendy’s is pertinent. It also notes that McDonald’s is planning to automate. Apparently Walmart is cutting hours after responding to pressure to increase wages.

The jury is out on the damage from changes in the minimum wage in cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Initial signs have indicated some negative employment effects, but the data is noisy and reported at a higher level of aggregation. Regardless, the least skilled will suffer negative consequences. Interestingly, unions backed the increases but have found ways to gain exemptions for their own contracts.

“…the DOL cites numerous studies to support its claim that higher wages are associated with higher levels of worker productivity, but the agency gets the causality reversed, among other errors of interpretation.“

The correct rationale for the DOL’s claim is with reference to the productivity of remaining workers near the margin, since less productive workers will have been canned. Too bad! The last link, from Antony Davies of the Mercatus Center, shows the positive relationship between unemployment and the minimum wage for less educated workers. Of course, this does not capture the negative effect on hours worked for those who remain employed following an increase in the wage floor.

Prohibition of unpaid internships would undoubtedly reduce the total number of internships offered to motivated students and others seeking vocational experience and training. The losers are prospective entrants to the knowledge work force who gain valuable experience and credibility as future job candidates by virtue of unpaid or low-paid gigs. But the consequences to would-be interns might not compare to the impact of lost training and experience already suffered by society’s least skilled as a consequence of the minimum wage. They are rendered unemployable by the state, and their alternatives are often limited to dependency or illegal activity.

The anti-capitalist Left is quick to condemn private businesses of unfair practices and even unethical behavior. In their estimation, certain prices are not just and profits are somehow undeserved rewards to private property, risk-taking and entrepreneurial sweat. They somehow imagine that meeting market demands is an easy matter, or worse, that market demands are not “socially useful”. Few have ever attempted to run a business, or if they have, they were unsuccessful and resent it. They also cannot grasp the social function served by private markets, to which we owe our standard of living and much of our culture.

What alternatives do these deep thinkers suggest? A socialist utopia? Jonathan Newman discusses the many practical problems presented by socialism and why it always fails to achieve success comparable to societies that rely on free markets. Newman’s treatment covers the inability of administered pricing to convey accurate information and effective incentives, the waste induced by queuing, neglect of comparative advantage, waste induced by production quotas, retarded innovation and technological development, and a deeply embedded stasis in the face of changing conditions. Little wonder that poverty is a consequence.

Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog has written of the stasis seemingly promoted by the progressives. They are quite protective of the status quo. Ironically, and quite rightly, Meyer calls them “deeply conservative”, too conservative to accept the dynamism of a capitalistic society. From Meyer:

“Progressives want comfort and certainty. They want to lock things down the way they are. They want to know that such and such job will be there tomorrow and next decade, and will always pay at least X amount. Which is why, in the end, progressives are all statists, because only a government with totalitarian powers can bring the order and certainty and control of individual decision-making that they crave..

Progressive elements in this country have always tried to freeze commerce, to lock this country’s economy down in its then-current patterns. Progressives in the late 19th century were terrified the American economy was shifting from agriculture to industry. They wanted to stop this, to cement in place patterns where 80-90% of Americans worked on farms.“

Freezing the diffusion of technology and often the state of technology itself is a consequence of socialist policy. And technology may well be the enemy of the Left in another sense: An interesting twist is provided by Fred Foldvary of the Mercatus Center in “Government Intervention Is Becoming Obsolete“. He writes that technology is undermining all of the usual economic rationales for intervention: asymmetric information, external effects, public goods, and monopoly. The article is brief, but he refers the reader to more extensive treatments.

A good example of socialism’s perverse appeal is the rhetoric of Senator Bernie Sanders, now a candidate for the Democrat Presidential nomination. Sanders has criticized the “the dizzying (and socially useless) number of products in the deodorant category….” At Reason.com, A. Barton Hinkle wondered what Sanders might consider the appropriate number of deodorant choices in our society. Would he wish to dictate a limited number as a matter of policy? And what other “socially useless” choices might he choose to limit in his failure to grasp that these choices reflect the incredible health and vibrancy of a market economy. Here’s Hinkle:

“… central planners think they can allocate economic resources better than the unguided hand of individual free choice. Like any good scientific experiment, this one is easily replicated, and has been time and again. See, for example, Venezuela, which has now run out of toilet paper, tampons, and other basic necessities because some people there think they should make all the choices for other people. And yet for many, the repeated lesson still has not sunk in. In an unintentionally hilarious essay about Cuba not so long ago, one writer noted that “the people are hungry here. There are severe food shortages. I do not understand why a tropical island would lack fruits and vegetables . . . and my only assumption is that maybe they have to export it all.”

Never forget that government can only pursue policy objectives via coercive power. I don’t think socialists have forgotten at all. Without the power to coerce, nothing proposed or done by the state can be accomplished and enforced. This is the course that progressive, anti-capitalists must follow to achieve their collectivist vision. But Chris Edwards reminds us that “Coercion Is Bad Economics” with the following points about government:

When it “uses coercion, its actions are based on guesswork.“

Its “actions often destroy value because they [arbitrarily] create winners and losers.“

Its “activities fail to create value because the funding comes from a compulsory source: taxes.”

Its “programs often fail to generate value because the taxes to support them create “deadweight losses” or economic damage.“

By arranging voluntary, mutually beneficial trades, market forces avoid all of these problems. As Robert P Murphy explains in The Freeman, “Capitalists Have a Better Plan“.

The anti-capitalists do not hesitate to saddle private businesses with confiscatory tax and regulatory burdens in the name of their own vision of society. Want to live in a bleak world of decline? Then here’s your prescription, courtesy of the anti-capitalist Left: regulate heavily, monitor transactions, impose wage and price controls, dismantle markets, tax at punitive levels, confiscate property, censor “offensive” speech, extend dependence on the state, absorb private savings and crowd out private investment with government borrowing, and inflate the money stock. Smells like a crappy “utopia”.

Will more government spending fix a weak economy? That is certainly a common refrain heard from economists and other pundits, including prominent members of the private business community. The historical record suggests otherwise, however, and there are practical reasons to doubt the efficacy of this sort of “fiscal stimulus.” Some of these are explored in “‘Timely, Targeted and Temporary?’ An Analysis of Government Expansions Over the Past Century“, from the Mercatus Center. In particular, countercyclical spending efforts have violated the “three Ts” often said to be required for successful demand-side policies. These efforts have been systematically late, badly targeted, and have resulted in permanent expansions in the resources absorbed by the government sector.

“Fiscal stimulus efforts going back to the 1930s consistently fail to meet the three Ts objective:

Improper timing. Policymakers have consistently struggled to properly time fiscal stimulus spending. In every postwar recession in the 20th century where stimulus spending was attempted, government spending peaked well after the economy was already in recovery. Policy lags—recognition, decision-making, implementation, and impact—are largely responsible for this fact.

Inefficient targeting. Going back to the New Deal, policymakers have targeted stimulus funds on the basis of politics rather than what delivers the most bang for the taxpayer buck. Further, individual policymakers cannot possess all the collective knowledge required to allocate and direct economic resources in the most efficient and effective manner, as markets do.

Permanent expansion of government. Stimulus funding has almost always led to permanent expansion in the size and scope of government. Indeed, the alleged need for immediate stimulus opens the door for expansions in government that might not have occurred under normal circumstances. On the rare occasions that the increased spending has been temporary, the costs have generally outweighed the benefits.“

As for inefficient targeting, I often hear that our nation’s infrastructural needs clinch the argument for stimulus spending. But those needs should be the focus of long-term planning and addressed on a continuing basis, not in bursts dictated by the state of the business cycle. Good projects should not be neglected in good times or bad, and there is no justification for undertaking a project if is not worthwhile on its merits. If increased spending can stabilize a weak economy, government should simply do something it does well: write checks. Who does infrastructure spending help in those bad times? It certainly fails to address the basic human needs left unmet in a weak economic environment; it may or may not add high-paying construction jobs. (An aside: in the last recession, the stimulus program didn’t so much add construction jobs as it did accelerate certain “shovel-ready” projects.)

Proponents of government stimulus always have a culprit in mind for the economy’s ills: weak demand or under-consumption. They say government can lead the way out with more spending. This post on Sacred Cow Chips, “Keynesian Bull Chips“, disputes this point of view and provides some links on the topic, including this post by John Cochrane that is now ungated on his blog. Stimulus efforts are usually billed as temporary but rarely are. The expanded budgets always seem to remain expanded, and government absorbs an increasing share of the nation’s spending. Meanwhile, the value of government’s contribution to output is overstated, since most of the output is not subject to a market test or valuation.

The growth of government increasingly burdens private sector. Apart from tax distortions, the resources available to the private sector are gradually crowded and squeezed by the growth of public spending. Private investment is curtailed as government deficits absorb a growing share of private saving. Increasingly detailed regulation diminishes the private sector’s productivity. Robert Higgs at the Mises Institute asks: “How Much Longer Can the U.S. Economy Bear the Burdens?” That’s a very good question.

The opposite of expansionary fiscal policy is fiscal austerity: lower spending, and lower deficits. The budget sequester, originally passed in 2011, is a good example. Keynesians typically contend that austerity will weaken the economy, but the evidence often suggests the contrary. Here is a Scott Sumner post on that point. For robust economic growth, cut spending broadly, cut taxes, and deregulate.

The administrative / regulatory state just grows and grows, as this tool from the Mercatus Center shows. As it does so, the bureaucracy becomes less accountable to the people in its sway, and seemingly less responsive to the checks and balances among the branches of government defined in the constitution. Rules are made by unelected bureaucrats, and their application is often uneven and arbitrary. In “The Sinestro Theory of The Administrative State,” Ben Domenech explores the link between this type of governance and declining “faith” in government itself. The danger posed by the administrative state is captured here by Domenech:

“In the era of the Administrative State, big government has been giving out too many rings to too many would-be Sinestros. And when it comes to trust in Washington, it’s the fact that this power is centralized in the Administrative State, rather than localized via federalism, which creates the special class of modern ringbearers. It allows them to work together in common purpose, as the progressives intended, as opposed to balancing and checking each other, as the Founders always understood to be essential.” [Sinestro link in original].

It may be too late, but left unchecked, the administrative state will be an ongoing and increasing drag on the economy and personal freedom. It must be rolled back.

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun